GOOD.is review by Ben Jervey
Carbon Nation: The Climate Change Movie That Doesn't Care if You Believe in Climate Change
BEN JERVEY
Contributing Editor, Environment
February 12, 2011 • 8:00 am PST 163 responses
Don't believe in climate change? Can't stand listening to Al Gore? Don't give a shit about the polar bears? This new climate documentary is for you.
Carbon Nation, which premiered last night in New York City, is "a climate change solutions movie that doesn't even care if you believe in climate change." It bills itself as an "optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan" film. It focuses on solutions, features an entertaining cast of characters, and speaks deliberately to America's right.
In other words, it's everything An Inconvenient Truth was not.
Here's the trailer:
Who in the film speaks to the right? There's Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director who has a "Bin Laden hates this car" bumper sticker on his plug-in hybrid. There's Bernie Karl, the Alaskan geothermal entrepreneur who twice voted for Bush and plainly denies man-made climate change, but says, "that doesn't make a difference. I want clean water and I want clean air, and that's so simple." There's the billionaire airline executive who built his fortune on a fossil fuel dependent business. There's a one-armed Texan cotton farmer-turned-wind farmer. There's the minister, the former Army Colonel, two (TWO!) electrical utility executives.
Filmmaker Peter Byck is very clear about his intentions in creating this film, saying he "wanted to find common ground" with those skeptical of climate change. "Someone once said that the storyteller runs society," Byck said. "So far the folks who don't want to believe that climate change is real have done a better job. I wanted to change that." He later said, "There are a lot of people who can't stand listening to Al Gore."
There are a couple handfuls of theater screenings around the country over the next couple of weeks, and a whole bunch of community organized screenings that are ongoing. It's well worth checking out.
